


God knows I tried

by angelmecanic



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Oxford-1890s, Pining, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements, not historically accurate whatsoever, you'll figure it out - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2020-12-13 22:39:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21005318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelmecanic/pseuds/angelmecanic
Summary: There's a dusty newspaper that haunts ghosts, and a secret that nobody knows. There are old cars that crash in the woods, and sleepers that sleep no more. An orphan girl wallows and waits, and ravens call for a king.----Or,It's 1898, and Adam is a journalism major in Oxford who never expected his life to include an Earl's heir obsessed with the supernatural, a tiny photographer who dresses like a rainbow, a boy fixated on death, or a handsome dark man with a pet raven





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from 'God Knows I Tried' by Lana del Rey.  
This is my first fic, and it's also no beta read, so please be kind ;) Aaand, please, don't look too closely into any historical and/or geographical information. Anyways, I hope you'll enjoy it

Adam Parrish knew loneliness. He knew it intimately, like one might know a lover. Except perhaps even more, for the few sexual encounters he’d had had been brief and only fleetingly satisfactory. Intimacy was a foreign word, where loneliness was an old worn friend. Adam thought that suited him well—he was a boy of dust clawing his way into being real. The only thing he could be was lonesome.

Lonesome, and not lonely, because the latter implied you missed not being alone. Lonesome implied you had been set apart from the world, and you simply walked that road—because you couldn’t imagine it any other way.

Maybe it was that close acquaintance with loneliness that made him so acutely aware of when it changed. 

He hadn’t expected it, and he certainly hadn’t planned for it. It had all started with his new job—assistant editor in a small newspaper on ‘thrilling accounts of the supernatural’. Or, well, at least that’s what the announcement had said. Adam, majoring in journalism with only one year left, and in fervent search for well-paid summer jobs, jumped at the chance. He still thought that the only reason he ended up getting the position was because all the other applicants must have been weirdos, and he had been the only one somewhat linked to journalism. He certainly had no previous practical experience working in a publication, though he did have a variety of different jobs under his belt. That may have helped. 

In any way, he wasn’t complaining—it paid off well enough that he could drop his third job, and it could give him an advantage when being chosen for an internship next year.  
If one ignored the subject of the paper, that is. Which was, admittedly, pretty strange.

The name was even stranger: _The Raven’s Quest_. It all sort of made sense once you met the owner, though. He was an old man at the ripe age of sixty (or a hundred), by the name of Mallory. He smelled old, too; like rancid dust and bitter lavender soap. His office also smelled like dog fur, because a dog called Dog was always inside. It had been present during Adam’s interview, and though Mr. Mallory had complained about it, he also had showed no intention of kicking out the animal. 

Stoicism was a quality Adam had perfected a long time ago, so he didn’t bat an eyelash at Dog or at the odd artefacts piled up all over the office. He had spotted strange metal devices, expensive looking souvenirs and an alarmingly large abundance of rocks. He could only assume they had something to do with the man’s interest with the supernatural. Well, he’d had quirky bosses before; he could make this work too.

One way or another, Adam always made everything work.

All in all, these circumstances should only have made Adam Parrish more alienated than ever. Then, on the summer of his 22th birthday, facing his last year of university, the world tilted on its’ axis. 

And the culprit was none other than Richard “Dick” Campbell Gansey III.

\---

Gansey—as the man had Adam call him when they first met—was probably a bigger mystery then the ones they wrote about on _The Raven’s Quest_. He was a golden boy; old money dripping from his vowels, from the way he held himself. But he also was the only other person working on a strange little paper about strange little things. His desk was a perpetual mess of yellow documents and his sleeves were always stained with ink.

From the way Mallory had spoken about him, Adam had pictured an old eccentric man with obscure pastimes, oblivious and half-senile._ (He’s a strange fellow, our Gansey. Head in the clouds or, better yet, deep down the earth, _Mallory had said. _Always unsatisfied until he finds his next secret, and then he forgets to properly write about it! That’s what you are here for, to ensure he doesn’t leave anything out and writes things like he’s addressing the public, not keeping a blasted diary)._

Gansey was oblivious, but he was also Adam’s age, rich and surprisingly kind. They had met at Adam’s first day at _The Raven_. When he had arrived Gansey was already hunched over his desk in the opposite wall, below the creaky stairs that lead to Mr. Mallory’s office. The headquarters for _The Raven_ were a small and cramped thing, full of papers, dark wood and the smell of ink. The room was also a mess, printing machinery coexisting with desks stacked with old publications, books and…were those more rocks?  


The only person downstairs was the man in one such desk, and the space already felt too crowded. Golden light entered the filthy windows (really, someone should consider cleaning them). It was early afternoon, and dust sat suspended in the light. It was early afternoon, and when the other man looked up, the light made his hair look like a crown.

“Oh, hello there.” The man stood up, wound his way around stacks of books lying on the floor, and shook Adam`s hand. He had a perfect strong nose and a perfect strong handshake. His glasses looked more expensive than Adam’s whole life. “Adam Parrish, correct? Mallory said you would be starting today. It is a pleasure to meet you”.

“Pleasure to meet you as well, Mr…?”

The other man winced. ” Of course, forgive my manners. My name is actually Richard Campbell Gansey III, but I was hoping we could ignore that fact. Please call me Gansey”.  
Adam, not exactly sure how to respond, agreed readily.

Despite Gansey’s ridiculous rich-person name and rich-person aura, he didn’t treat Adam with any of the superiority most of his university classmates sported. As he showed Adam how things worked around the paper, he talked to him like an equal. He was cordial and helpful, his voice the smooth marble of a politician’s. Adam again wondered what he was doing in a run-down, eccentric little paper.

“And here is where more of the magic happens”, Gansey was saying. He opened a door in the left corner of the room, leading to a dark sort of closet. “Our photographer reveals the pictures here. Although admittedly, we don’t really publish many…Our area of expertise doesn’t really have many tangible things to capture, you see? Oh, and the instruments required are quite expensive, I suppose…” The last part seemed more like an afterthought, like something someone might have pointed out to him.

Adam was curious about what they had been able to ‘capture’. “May I see?”

Gansey seemed to hesitate. “Of course… I mean, the photographer always does something with the light so it doesn’t damage the photos—fascinating, really—but I don’t think a few minutes will do much harm.”

Though Adam had not taken the photography electives Oxford offered, he knew enough to guess that a few minutes would probably do at least a little harm. But Gansey was already fiddling with something inside the small room, and Adam was not about to object.

“Voilà!” Gansey exclaimed when a light bulb flickered open. “It’s always a little tricky to get it to work.” Adam was more surprised that they had the funds to have electricity. Perhaps the paper was more popular than he’d originally thought.

The room was narrow and dimly illuminated. There was a lamp on top of a crippled stool, facing a high desk full of devices and old newspapers. On the desk—with some more parts below it—were the lighting devices and other artefacts Adam had seen in the photography rooms of Oxford; albeit more rundown and dated. Adam was about to touch one, but then it occurred to him that, old and barely-pieced-together as they were, the photographer would likely still not appreciate it if he did.

Above the desk a square board was pinned to the brick wall, photos and cut-out articles overlapping on the cork. The low yellow light cast eerie shadows on the black and white photographs, making them look like forbidden truths. There weren’t many—Adam supposed these were either the discarded, more recent or important ones. Gansey stood behind him, and said like a proud parent, “They are excellent, aren’t they?”

Adam made a vague humming sound and observed them closely. There was one with a car—a Lanchester Ten, from what he could see—in the middle of the woods. The hood was smashed against an old gnarly tree, the front windows broken. Next to the picture was the headline of an article: _INVISIBLE PORTALS IN THE WOODS OF DIDCOT: THE MYSTERIES OF ST. MICHAEL’S LEY. On this last 5th of February a car was found in the middle of the forest surrounding Didcot, Oxfordshire. At 18:21 our group of investigators found this vehicle stranded between the trees. There was no road or path that could—_. The article had been ripped off there, and Adam’s eyes moved on to the picture of a crumbling church in the bottom right corner. Another depicted the overly decorated sitting room of _Lady Denbury, haunted by the ghost of her daughter in law—_

The one that really caught his attention, though, was the one right in the middle. In the picture appeared three boys, standing like statues of dark angels in what looked like a cemetery. Adam recognised the one at the centre as Gansey, tall and kingly. He was handsome—it was possible he didn’t know how not to be—but there was something about the way he was staring directly into the camera, piercing beyond the lens, that made Adam’s hairs stand on end.

To his right was another boy, further among the graves, tall and lean and crooked, back and neck bending to look at the sky. He was too far from the camera to make out any details, but from what Adam could see he looked feral and vibrant where Gansey was golden and collected. The last boy was bent over a tomb, so maybe the movement was what had caused his figure to be blurred and oddly diffused.

“Is this St. Giles Cemetery?” Adam asked, pointing at the photo.

”No, it’s Wolvercote, on the outskirts of town”. Gansey sighed and pushed up his glasses. “We were hoping, since it’s closer to the ley line, and burial places hold power—even new ones—that… Well, it does not matter. There was nothing to find, in the end.”

“St. Michael’s Ley?” 

At Adam’s question something seemed to come alive inside of Gansey. “And what do you know of that, my dear boy?”

Adam wanted to point out that they were probably the same age, but Gansey didn’t seem to be aware he came off as condescending, and looked truly eager for Adam’s answer, so he let it go.

“Well, the students at The College tell all sorts of legends and horror stories about it. Everything strange that has ever happened in this town is attributed to St. Michael’s Ley. It’s a ley line across all of Britain, right?”

“You know what ley lines are, then.” There was something different about Gansey now; in his eyes, in the way he spoke. Adam couldn’t really put his finger on it.  
He had been required to take a science elective last year for his degree, and he had chosen geology. His teacher had mentioned ley lines a couple of times, writing them off as myths, but Adam had still gotten the basics. “They are strings crisscrossing the world, creating fields of energy or messing with them. Many people attribute odd events to them.” He felt like he was giving a definition in class, trying to impress the teacher. For some reason, he wanted Gansey to approve of him. It was something about the way his feet stepped sure on the ground, the way he held his shoulders—or perhaps the way he looked at you, like you were about to fulfil…something.

So when the other man clapped “Correct again, Mr Parrish!” Adam felt like he had accomplished something. “Indeed, strange events are oft attributed to ley lines,” continued Gansey, “and some people spend their lives chasing them, trying to unearth their secrets.”

“Like you” Adam guessed.

Gansey smiled, bright and pleased. “Precisely. And that is about to become your job too, Mr. Parrish”.

“Please, call me Adam.” He tapped his finger against the desk. “And no secret can remain secret forever, I don’t think.” 

“Adam”, Gansey said, smile quieter but no less powerful, “what do you know about Welsh kings?”

Adam could now see what was different about Gansey—where before he had been distantly polite, with a presence of marble, now there were cracks of excitement in his armour.  
No longer perfect, but real and fully alive. Some part of Adam ached, and decided he liked him better this way.

That was the start.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam meets a certain family, and a certain boy

It was the first week of July, Adam’s birthday had come and gone, and he was dying.

Well, not _technically_ dying, he supposed he had been through worse (no, he’d been through far worse), but it certainly felt like it from where he was standing. Which was at the top of four flights of stairs, having carried heavy boxes and knowing he had to carry a couple more. Luckily, he didn’t own many things, and he had already carried the dismantled desk, so the only things left were clothes and some books. 

After two weeks working at _The Raven_ he had finally moved from his crappy room at the College. He had used his savings from his former third job, knowing he had the safety net of the new one. 

The apartment wasn’t really that big, standing in the sloped attic of a house full of women. The house was slotted with a shoehorn between two equally narrow houses. It was not the richest part of town, but it also wasn’t the poorest. The streets were marginally clean and the apartment had been agreeably cheap, so Adam had applied for it.   
That’s how he found himself in 300 Fox Way. 

The announcement had said they were a family renting their attic. Adam had not realised they were a family of a thousand. All of them women. Mrs. Sargent, who seemed to be in charge, had showed him upstairs, but he had soon lost count of how many more women roamed the floors below. Adam didn’t really know how they all fit in here, or if they were even related, but he had thought it impolite to ask.

Now Mrs. Sargent was with him again, giving him the keys. “Remember, you’ve got a little kitchenette, but I’m not really sure if it works. We rarely saw our last tenant and, to be honest, I don’t even know if she ate at all.” She smoothed her hands down her dress—worn but clean, blue with little leaves sewn into the cuffs of her sleeves. “You can use the main kitchen if it doesn’t work, and be sure to write your name on your food, or Calla and Orla will steal it”.

Adam smiled his polite-schoolboy smile. “Thank you, Mrs Sargent.”

“Not at all. Let us know if you need anything”.

Good manners had been drilled into him with an iron fist since he was a child so, although he couldn’t imagine himself asking them for anything, he said, “Of course.”  
Adam Parrish never asked anyone for anything, but he _wanted_. He always wanted more. More than he should, probably. He worked himself to death to get it.

He turned to his new apartment, small and humid and full of dust. Everything he owned was already inside, from books to clothes to sweat and blood. It was all his and his alone.

Adam Parrish smiled an Adam Parrish smile.

\---

“I don’t understand.”

Adam looked up from where he had been making annotations on an old article. He was trying to find the things that made it unappealing—Adam had the suspicion it had to do with Gansey’s use of words like ‘uncouth’, and his boundless love for commas—to try to correct them in future papers. He was, as it were, trying to do his job.

Since that first day, Gansey had pulled him into a rabbit hole of dead welsh kings and a quest for granted favours. He’d showed him yellowed manuscripts that—according to him—proved that the great Glendower hadn’t been moved to the New World, but was instead hidden somewhere under the very nose of the English. 

Gansey had told him his investigations had led him to believe he was asleep near this point in St. Michael’s Ley. They both poured themselves over Gansey’s journal, which recounted everything he’d learned in his adventures. Adam theorised with him, let himself be pulled into lost centuries of history. He didn’t know yet if he truly believed in any of it, but he liked watching the sun rise in Gansey’s eyes and feeling, for the first time, like he might have a friend.

Through all this dream-like trance, however, Adam had still been worried about what his boss might have to say about Adam not doing his job. Gansey had brushed him off saying that Mallory had helped him in the past, and wouldn’t mind that Adam was doing it now. But needing money was not on Gansey’s vocabulary, and Adam was still Adam, so he worried on.

Though, to be fair, Adam hadn’t seen the _The Raven’s_ owner since his interview; not knowing if the man never left his office or if he simply wasn’t there. Nevertheless, Adam was still trying to do what he was getting paid for. Hence the correcting of old articles.

But Gansey was looking at him now from across the two desks they’d pushed together, brow furrowed and glasses askew over his nose.  
“What?” Adam sighed, deciding to postpone his task for the moment.

“It makes no sense, Adam. Oxford University has been functioning for almost eight centuries, and several of the magicians in Glendower`s entourage are said to have passed through here. It’s in the middle of the most powerful ley line in Britain, with multiple signs that point to the prince’s burial occurring here. Why can’t we find him?”

There was a certain thrill in watching Gansey’s carefully constructed persona, all porcelain and politician’s smiles, slowly come undone. But that still didn’t mean he enjoyed seeing his friend get frustrated.

“You’ve checked all the cemeteries in Oxford’s vicinity, right?” Gansey nodded. “Well, you said that burial places are often subconsciously chosen because they’ve served that purpose before. What about private mausoleums, the kind that important families have in their own properties? I know there are a couple of families like that around here.”

“Adam, that’s brilliant! I’ve met the Roseborns from Abbington, of course.” Of course he had. “And I know about the Merrywheathers. I also think the Lynnbowens had a residence here somewhere. _Bowen_’s of Welsh origin, too, if I’m not mistaken…”

Gansey was getting carried away, and Adam felt it his duty to bring him back to the ground. That was always Adam’s job, to be rooted down and never able to fly away.  
“Gansey, they are private properties”.

“So?” Under Gansey’s nonplussed look, Adam sighed.

“So, we can’t exactly go traipse around their grounds and start digging holes where we please.”

“Oh, I’m sure that if we just spoke to…”

But at that moment the doorbell tinkled, and the end of his sentence was lost. Gansey sat facing the entrance, and his eyes lit up at the newcomer. Adam, however, had to turn in his chair to see who it was.

Until that point, the only people who had come to the paper had been suppliers, himself and present company notwithstanding. The man at the door was, however, clearly not a supplier.

He stood tall and lazy, hand braced against the doorframe above his head. His shoulders were sharp knives angled at them, his eyes blue gauntlets thrown at the feet of the world.   
Dusk outlined his figure, and he was a devil. No; he was a boy. Dusk breathed down his neck, and he was a truth.

“Hey, Dick, stop having your ghost-fuckery shit sent to our house.”

The spell was broken. The boy walked over to Gansey’s desk, harshly throwing a letter and a bound package on it. Despite his rudeness—he hadn’t introduced himself, not even apologised for interrupting—Gansey looked delighted to see him.

“Ronan, I thought you’d still be with your brothers. What brings you to our humble abode?” Gansey grinned at him like he was his favourite terrier. The man did not look like a terrier to Adam; more like a Doberman. 

The alleged Ronan gave a grunt that could mean anything from ‘whatever’ to ‘go fuck yourself”. He finally spared a glance at Adam. His eyes were as icy blue and impenetrable as they’d seemed from the door. 

He examined him, and Adam examined him back. 

He wore tailored black clothes, richly made. They were rumpled and thrown carelessly over his lean body, though. The fact that he could own such an expensive-looking waistcoat buttoned wrong and wrinkled, and still look like he was born to wear it, made Adam’s blood run green with envy.

His irritation grew when the man flicked his eyes away after a few seconds, visibly dismissing him.

Gansey, seemingly oblivious to all of this, proceeded to introduce them. “Adam, this is Mr. Ronan Lynch, my best friend and…well, roommate, I suppose. Ronan, this is Mr. Adam Parrish, the exceptionally bright partner I was telling you about”.

Adam felt warmed by Gansey’s introduction, although the feeling didn’t last long. 

“Yeah, whatever, we don’t need any more strays. Are you gonna do something about your ghost shit, or what.”

“,” Gansey said, but Mr. Lynch didn’t even seem to hear him. Adam felt hot with shame at being figured out at first glance. He felt bared and dirty, and hated that some spoiled rich kid had reduced him to that.

Gansey was saying something about manners and basic human decency—about how Ronan may actually get to like people if he just gave them a chance—, all while opening the envelope Mr. Lynch had delivered. The man just scoffed and rolled his eyes, exasperated and aggressive—everything he did seemed tainted with aggression.

In doing so his eyes met with Adam’s, and though his expression didn’t change, his posture screamed a challenge. Perhaps he thought he could make Adam cower in fear, make him insignificant under his stare. Adam had faced worse monsters, and mayhaps he hadn’t won, but then again that had never been his goal.

Adam Parrish survived, no matter what it took.

Ronan Lynch flashed him a knife of a grin. “Excuse me, I clearly meant it’s a bloody pleasure”, he said; voice a mockery of his words.

So Adam simply stared back, not giving an inch. “I’m sure ‘bloody’ is a requirement for your pleasure”.

Mr. Lynch raised his eyebrows and curled his mouth. When it became clear Adam wasn’t going to break, he averted his eyes. Tired, and not caring enough to feel victorious, Adam turned his attention to Gansey. 

But Gansey was reading the letter Mr. Lynch had brought, so absorbed he had missed the exchange. He then let out a delighted sound and waved the missive around, the sealing wax broken like a parted mouth.

“Mrs. Lambert has a ghost infestation,” he said, like someone might say they’d just inherited a fortune. “She thought it was her late husband at first, but her cat was murdered this week, and there were threats on the walls written in its blood. Vases broken… Torn wallpaper…” he mumbled, skimming the letter. “Now she thinks it may be her deceased brother”.

“Thrilling family dinners, I’m sure,” said Mr. Lynch, who now stood reclined against a window. Something about his slanted posture reminded Adam of something, though he couldn’t pinpoint what…

With the air of someone who was used to ignoring him, Gansey continued, “She sends us the most perturbing thing yet, she says.” He patted the box in front of him.

“More perturbing than her dead cat?” Adam muttered, too low for Gansey to hear. He jolted when he heard a dry snort of laughter, and realized that Mr. Lynch, standing between the two desks, had heard. His veins filled with bubbling electricity, and he cursed himself for being pleased by the approval of such a man.

When Gansey took the object out of the box, there was an underwhelmed pause.

“A music box? That’s it? I was expecting some proper creepy shit.” Adam hated to agree, but Mr. Lynch was right. He wasn’t sure what exactly he had been expecting, but it was not an old-fashioned flowery music box.

That was until Gansey lifted the lid.

A scratching screech filled the room, and the tiny ballerina spun out of control. The shadows grew longer, and suddenly the room seemed to be something else, pressing down on them like the dark walls of a cave. Adam tried covering his ears, but the sound remained stuck in his skull. It almost sounded like it was coming from his deaf ear.

And then the song started.

_Kings and queens_  
and dreamers of dreams  
a sleeper sleeps   
and a sleeper forgets  
ravens and kings  
and a sleeper awakens   
make way  
blue lily, lily blue  
make way for the Raven King 

The ballerina stood still, and all noise ceased. Adam didn’t think any of them were breathing. The room returned to its normal state—maybe it had never changed. Maybe it had always been something else. 

Adam’s mind was spiralling. When presented with shocking events, his brain’s first instinct was to analyse it from all its angles, looking for a coherent explanation he could then relay. 

He thought of the gramophone, able to reproduce recorded sounds, but its dimensions were far bigger than those of the music box, and he didn’t know of any way to recreate the same effect with smaller proportions. Putting that possibility aside, he remembered what he’d heard of the radio: a clever device conceived by an Italian inventor, able to retransmit voices with clarity. It was the latest hot topic topic in the university field, and from what Adam had heard there was also no way such an invention fit inside the small box. But nothing else made sense, and he didn’t…

“What. The. _Hell_”, Mr. Lynch said, with feeling. It was crass and crude, but it served to break them out of the strange trance they’d all fallen into. Adam looked at Gansey, who was turning the box in his hands, tapping and poking around, probably following the same line of questioning Adam had. 

Even Mr. Lynch seemed spooked, despite the layers of aggression he wore like a second skin, his eyes were too wide and he was biting on worn leather bracelets on his wrist, which Adam hadn’t noticed before. His body was bent towards Gansey, cursing at him for touching the music box (_Dick, for God’s sake, I don’t want to hear the bloody dying cat again_), and something about his crooked posture sparked a memory in Adam’s mind. 

It should probably have been obvious, but Adam hadn’t remembered about the picture in the photography room until now: Ronan Lynch was the boy to Gansey’s right in the cemetery.

Gansey had introduced Mr. Lynch as his best friend, but this more than anything else made Adam feel that _lonesome_ aspect creep up onto him again. Gansey already had an inner circle, he’d gone after dead welsh kings and mysteries before; he didn’t need Adam by his side. Seeing the two best friends bicker and theorise comfortably about the strange song (Gansey enthusiastically, Lynch begrudgingly), made Adam go back to feeling like the dirt boy that always wanted things he couldn’t have.

“Adam? What do you think?” Gansey’s voice dragged him out of his thoughts. He was staring at him expectantly, with an expression far too cheerful for someone who’d just listened to a possibly supernatural (Adam dwelt in_ facts_; he was having trouble processing that there could be _more_) song.

“I think,” he said carefully, “that it’s a start”.

Mr. Lynch’s intense gaze burned his retina, but not as much as Gansey’s radiant smile.

“Well, lads. _Excelsior, then”._


	3. Chapter 3

“You’re a boy”.

Adam was so startled that he almost sent a spoonful of haricot beans into the ceiling. Not that he thought anyone would notice— the kitchen at 300 Fox Way was so colourful that one more hue wouldn’t really make a difference. Perhaps it might even add more texture to the bright orange paint.

“I beg your pardon?” He turned around from the robust wooden table, only to find a rainbow that rivalled the kitchen itself standing by the door. Though, admittedly, quite a small one. As if sensing his thoughts, the rainbow frowned.

“Are you a burglar? Because I must warn you, Persephone’s baking pans are very heavy, and I happen to wield them real well”.

While Adam raised his hands in what he hoped was a placating manner, he couldn’t help but notice that the rainbow was a girl about his age—and a pretty one at that. She had a rather sloping nose and frowny lips, coffee skin and moles bracketing her mouth. Her hair was too short to be confined in a bun, and stray locks were already breaking free from her thousand hairpins.

She looked truthful and honest, and Adam desperately wanted to feel awake.

“I promise I’m not a burglar”, he said, trying to smile reassuringly. He was not sure he succeeded. “Uhm… I moved in a couple weeks ago? Into the attic? Mrs. Sargent showed me around, and she said it was fine to use the main kitchen if mine didn’t work. I’m pretty sure mine doesn’t even know what ‘working’ means, so…” He was aware he was rambling, but he didn’t seem to be able to stop.

“Oh”, the girl’s shoulders relaxed immediately. For one so little, she did know how to look intimidating. She stepped around the heavy table and reached for something above Adam’s head (for some reason, the residents of Fox Way had deemed it a good idea to hang all sort of culinary utensils directly above where they ate. Adam was always scared a saucepan was going to crack open his skull.) For a moment he was also scared that the girl was going to follow through with her threat, but she came down from her toes holding only a mug.

“Mum told me about you”, she said, turning away to grope around the cabinets. “I’m Blue Sargent, by the way. My mum’s Mrs. Sargent”. She wrinkled her nose, and Adam felt a tingling on his fingertips. “Maura. You should start calling her that, too, if you are going to live here.”

She was stirring some herbs in her mug—rather forcefully—while she dumped another questionable-looking substance into the mix. The smell was, to put it mildly, also questionable. “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Sargent”

She hopped into the counter, still stirring energetically. “You should call me Blue, too. And I’ll also call you by your given name, if you don’t mind”.

It was exceedingly indecorous for a young unmarried girl to exchange Christian names with a man she’d only just met, but Adam hadn’t exactly been raised in polite society, and he couldn’t care less. “No, of course. Call me Adam, please. Adam Parrish”.

She put a spoonful of the smelly tea into her mouth (which was a very strange way to drink tea, if oddly endearing), and waved the spoon around. “So tell me, Adam Parrish, how come I’ve never seen you around before?”

“I work in a garage downtown, and I try to take as many shifts as I can in the summer, so I’ve been working some weird hours”. It was true—most days he had to bring his food to work, or eat dinner late into the night. So far he’d only really met a couple Fox Way residents (Calla had been…interesting, and Orla had been…uncomfortable). “I also work in a paper some afternoons, and this week I finally managed to drop some garage shifts to be able to fit in everything. So… here I am”, he laughed awkwardly, shoving more dry beans into his mouth.

Blue hummed, swinging her feet and kicking the cabinet she was perched on. Her dress was too short, and you could easily see her ankles. Adam focused on his plate.

“What are you working so hard for?” Adam’s eyes snapped back to her, and he felt himself tensing and preparing himself—_where do you think your fancy books will get you? You’re ashamed of us, is that it? You think you’re so much better than us, you piece of—_But her gaze was curious, instead of mocking. There was something like understanding tucked into her eyebrows, like she already knew him, down to his ribs, and approved of what she saw.

It unsettled him, rattled his bones.

“I..I study here, at the College. I’ve got a scholarship, but it doesn’t cover everything.” She nodded, like she got it. Adam thought about her dress—which looked more like a dress inside of a dress; old and worn, but well kept—and realized that maybe she truly did.

“Oxford, huh? You do look smart. It’s the eyes, I think”. She licked her spoon (Adam was still very confused about her tea-drinking process).

“Thank you”. He had never been good at accepting compliments, even strange ones such as this one.

“I also just came from work,” she continued. “I’m a waitress. Worst job in the world. Rich entitled kids from the College come by all the time. No offense”.

Adam was deeply amused. “None taken.”

Blue pointed her spoon at him like a sword. “Oh, you’re not like them at all, don’t worry.”

It burned, in the way that you don’t want shameful things to burn. He let out a sarcastic snort to mask his foolishness, “No, I don’t suppose I give that wealthy-kid image.”

“That’s not what I meant,” an apologetic look flashed across her face, but it only made Adam’s threadbare clothes itch more on his skin. “I just meant that I’m having an actual conversation with you. As far as I’ve seen, your school may be very good at being ancient, but it doesn’t really do a good job at teaching manners.”

Adam laughed, and relaxed a little. This he could do; laughing at his colleagues and pretending he didn’t long to be one of them. _One day, one day_. “Yeah, that sounds like a pretty accurate description.”

“This job’s only temporary, though,” Blue said, looking determined. “It’s not what I wanna do for the rest of my life. God, can you imagine?” She shook her head, and Adam scrapped the last of the beans off his plate. “I want to be a photographer. Maybe even travel around a bit, if I can weasel my way into an important enough paper”.

“Sounds perfect,” he said, and he meant it. “I want to be a journalist so, hey, maybe we’ll work together someday”.

“I’d love that,” she said, smiling like a pixie, and sounding like she meant it, too.

Adam picked up his plate and the bent metal spoon he’d been using and walked over to the sink. While he washed them, he looked over to Blue, seated to his left and looking almost done with the foul tea.

“Uhm, excuse me, but I couldn’t help but notice that I haven’t seen any men around the house, and you seemed surprised to see me, so…”

“Yeah, no men around here. Never have been, I don’t think,” Blue answered Adam’s wordless question. “Until you, of course. I hope that doesn’t disturb the soul of the house”.

“The soul of the-“

“Yes, haven’t you heard?” Mischief danced in her eyes, and with her spiky hair and the bronze taint the walls gave the light, she looked almost fae. “We’re psychics around here”.

“I have”, and he had; he’d seen shrouded women walk into the house like they were the ones being buried, uptight men asking for business prospects, wide-eyed girls and tittering boys in a quest for love. One of the thousand residents of the house would usher them inside a curtained room at the end of the hall—a room Adam had been ’gently’ warned against entering. “The big sign on the door was a pretty good giveaway”.

Blue grimaced, and Adam couldn’t help but agree. When he’d first seen it he’d almost reconsidered moving in; bold green letters were stamped over a garishly orange background, claiming ‘your future awaits you’, ‘ask a true psychic’ `love is coming’. It was vaguely threatening and oddly inspiring, all at once.

“Yeah, Orla put it up. She can be a bit…Orla”, Blue said. Adam, though having met her but once, couldn’t help but agree. “Well, in any case,” she continued, staring resolutely at the bottom of her mug, “not all of us are. Psychics, that is.”

“Oh.” Through the years, Adam had become adept at reading people; he was always subconsciously waiting for the room to turn sour, to discover that calm waters had become storms. Blue’s storm was a quiet one; the rain of unfulfilled things. Adam was well acquainted with loud storms, but it was quiet thunder that drifted in his veins. He had found, though, that hearing apologies never helped. “At least they won’t have you putting up ridiculous signs”.

She gave him a rueful smile, but there was something like relief tucked in the corners of her eyes, and a new ease to the lines of her shoulders that hadn’t been there before.

“Trust me, I still do all the work anyways”.

He chuckled, putting away the washed dishes, and was about to say something inconsequential, hoping to see her pixie smile again, when someone interrupted him.

“Blue? Oh, there you are.” Mrs. Sargent –or Maura, though Adam still felt uncomfortable calling her that— appeared on the doorway. She looked stern but warm, present in a way Adam’s own mother had never been. “Hello, Adam, how are you doing? Blue, your boys are waiting outside. I think they’re trying to decide whose turn it is to come and knock.”

Adams’ “I’m well, ma’am, thank you” was in contrast to Blues’ hurried “What? But it’s not even…Bloody hell, I’m late!”, which she then followed by bolting upstairs.

Mrs. Sargent sighed and shook her head, but there was a fondness in her eyes that made Adam wonder, feeling his throat tighten, if his mother had ever looked at him like that. He shook himself out of the useless sentimentalism and looked to the violently purple clock hung above a stack of shelves. And…bloody hell, indeed –he was also late. He must have been talking with Blue for longer than he’d thought.

“Um, excuse me, Mrs. Sargent, but I’m afraid I must go as well”.

She nodded and smiled a nostalgic smile, with a wicked edge that reminded him of her daughter. “Ah, I used to hurry a lot when I was young. But for far more interesting matters.” Adam didn’t quite know how to respond, so he simply smiled awkwardly and backed out of the room.

He grabbed his coat from the entrance rack, thinking about how he would explain to Gansey that he was late because he had lingered too long talking to a very interesting and very pretty girl. He opened the main door…and stopped dead in his tracks.

There, fidgeting a step below him, stood none other than Richard Campbell Gansey the Third, as if Adam had conjured him into existence simply by thinking of him. Knowing Gansey, it wouldn’t be entirely impossible.

The other man recovered first, straightening his posture and pasting on a smile that Adam had come to learn meant Gansey was unsure of his footing and didn’t wish to show it. “Er, hello. Did you also come to pick Jane up? I thought you said you would bring your bicycle directly to Mrs. Lamberts’ house”.

“What”, Adam was, to say the least, a bit confused. When they had scheduled a meeting with Mrs. Lambert after the debacle with the music box, they had agreed that Adam would go by bike after his shift at the garage. Gansey had repeatedly offered to pick him up with his carriage, but Adam had refused, and he didn’t think he had ever offered Gansey his address. How had he known where Adam lived? And did his presence here mean that he had completely ignored Adam’s wishes…?

Before his anger could fully settle, though, he heard a voice behind him. “Adam?”

He turned and saw Blue standing in the hall. She had thrown on a blue bonnet hat over her messy hair, and had a heavy looking camera slung around her neck. She had to support it with an additional hand, and Adam was surprised that her tiny frame could carry it.

“Do you know Gansey?” she continued. Adam’s confusion only grew.

“Yeah, we work together. Do _you_ know Gansey?”

Blue squared her shoulders and raised her chin, and Adam was no longer worried about the weight of the camera. “Yes, I also work with him. But wait, wait, the paper you were talking about was _The Raven_?”

Things were starting to click into place. “Oh, so I’m assuming you’re our photographer.” Once mysteries were solved, Adam could relax. He gave her a smile as if to say _I’m such an idiot_. “Guess we will be working together, after all”.

She smiled back at him, and Adam realised delightedly that her lips stretched crookedly. Gansey cleared his throat behind them and Adam turned to him immediately, feeling embarrassed about forgetting about his friend. Gansey’s eyes darted warily between him and Blue, looking unsure and hesitant.

“So, Adam, how come you’re in Jane’s house if you, ah, didn’t know who she was? If you don’t mind me asking, of course.” He was being overly polite, his smile too bright. It reminded Adam of how he’d acted a few weeks back, when one of his fathers’ friends had recognised him at a café where he and Adam had been poring over books on the occult, tired of the suffocating heat in the paper. The man had asked why Gansey wasn’t helping his mother in a political something or other. Gansey’s answer had been perfectly cheerful and had left the man laughing, but his hand had crumpled slightly the page he was reading.

He snapped back to the present when Blue shoved him aside to be able to lean threateningly over Gansey. Adam suspected that the advantage in height that the steps provided wasn’t a common occurrence for Blue, and she seemed ready to take full advantage of it. 

“I don’t think I owe you, or anyone, an explanation for who is in my house. And what is _that_?” She gestured towards the cravat Gansey was wearing, which looked too hot for summer and far too yellow for any season.

Gansey struggled to keep up with the conversation. “Jane…I didn’t mean to…well…I just meant…And what are you alluding to? I wanted to cause a good impression on Mrs. Lambert.”

Blue’s face arranged itself in a complicated dance of exasperation, scepticism, and a veiled sort of fondness. Adam’s, however, furrowed in confusion once more. “Is Jane your real name, then?”

Perhaps “blue” was a nickname she liked to go by. It _was _a rather strange name. But the look she gave him cut his thoughts short.

“No, he’s just an idiot—“, a loud sound climbed over the rest of her words and drowned them.

“Hey, dickheads! Are you gonna spend all day shit-chatting, or are we gonna get this show on the road?”

The three of them turned at once, and Gansey even stumbled down a step from the momentum. Parked on the sidewalk was an old-fashioned carriage, opulent and black. What caught Adam’s attention, however, were not the bright orange wheels it was standing on, nor the regal-looking stallions ready to burn away the day, but the very irritated boy hanging from the driver’s seat.

_Mr. Ronan Lynch_, Adam’s mind supplied, looking as ready to fight the world as the last time he’d seen him. _What a dick_.

While Gansey offered to take Adam with them again, which finally relented to (somehow, knowing that Blue was also going with them made it bearable), Blue regaled Mr. Lynch with a few choice words –better fit for a sailor than a lady— about where he could put his road.

“Can’t hear you from down there, maggot,” was the only thing he said. While the three of them approached, Mr. Lynch’s eyes flickered briefly to Adam in the midst of his ongoing bickering with her. Perhaps he didn’t want the ‘stray’, as he’d previously put it, to ride with them. But if that was the case, he at least managed to restrain himself from saying it.

He'd only seen the man once after the music-box debacle. He’d dropped by to simply, by all intents and purposes, annoy the hell out of Adam. They’d barely spoken, with all of Mr. Lynch’s useless comments directed at Gansey, but it had been enough to cause Adam a headache the size of a house.

“And, anyways,” Blue was saying, hands on her hips and staring up at him, “it’s my turn to ride in front.”

Mr. Lynch made the affronted sound of an offended owl. “No way. Driver’s seat is mine”

Gansey gave an exasperated sigh, like he was bracing himself. “Technically, it is my carriage, and since I’m the one driving it —no, Ronan, no way in hell,” Mr. Lynch had opened his mouth to speak, and was now scowling deeply. Meanwhile, Adam was just thrilled to see perfect Gansey swearing. “—I should be the one to decide who rides upfront with me. Jane did express a desire to do so last time, and considering that you always get that spot, you shouldn’t mind giving it up for once.”

Hearing Mr. Lynch’s heated “I bloody well _do_ mind”, Adam decided that the conversation would probably take a while. He gestured towards Gansey and Blue that he was getting inside the carriage, but they barely noticed, both too engrossed in the discussion.

He climbed inside and closed the door behind him. There the voices of the others were muffled; that and the heavy sunset curtains, currently half draped over the window, served to give the interior a secluded sort of intimacy. It smelled like leather and old worn things, not quite pleasant but not unpleasant either. He settled on one of the brown seats and was surprised when the left side of it gave in more than it should have. Inspecting the space closely, he noticed that everything did look a little too old, if well cared for. He would have expected someone like Gansey to own a pristine, luxurious carriage; perhaps even one of the new car models that often came in at the garage.

Then again, this was the boy that worked at a supernatural paper for leisure and spent all his free time looking for dead Welsh kings. Perhaps he was simply in love with all things unordinary.

At that moment, the door opened and a storm slumped in the seat before him. Startled, Adam realised that he had always been expecting Blue to end up sitting inside the carriage. Mr. Lynch didn’t seem like the type of man to relent, ever, in anything.

Well, then. He was in for an awkward ride.

The other man slammed the door shut harder than necessary, and then proceeded to slam it again. Adam couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the childish display, but the man seemed too busy scowling out the window to notice.

As if in answer to the violent tantrum, the carriage heaved into movement. Adam had to grip the side of the window to keep from being hurled into Mr. Lynch’s lap. Rather than moving, it felt like they were stumbling along a path of boulders.

“There’s something wrong with the front wheels,” he said, mostly to break the tense silence. Mr. Lynch hadn’t even looked in his direction since he’d come in. He was slouched as far from Adam as he could get, acting as if mundane laws such as gravity couldn’t affect him, but still holding on tightly to the edge of his seat.

At Adam’s words, however, he directed his glare towards him. “Everything’s wrong with the Pig.”

Adam blinked. “The what?”

“The Pig,” a cutting smile stretched itself in the man’s lips. “The name of this shit with wheels. Fitting, right?”

Adam did not know what to say to that, so he just gave a noncommittal sound and deemed the conversation over. This was more words than they’d exchanged last time, and while it wasn’t exactly polite conversation, it also wasn’t as scathing as he’d expected. Still, he thought that once they’d acknowledged each other’s presence, they would go back to ignoring each other for the rest of the ride.

To his surprise, Mr. Lynch seemed to have different ideas.

“Gansey said you were brilliant,” he asked, gaze heavy and burdening. “Why the fucking _Raven_, then?

Momentarily thrown by the brusque change in topic and the sort-of-but-not-quite compliment, Adam could only gape at him. “Um —What?”

“_The Raven_,” Mr. Lynch explained, as if talking to a child, “is a weird-ass shithole for nerds like Dick, not for pretentious little assholes from The College,” he spit out that last part like it was a worse insult than all the other expletives he used.

Adam wasn’t sure what the point of that was, other than picking a fight. The carriage continued to stumble along, and inside it Adam felt his blood start to boil.

“So?” he said, voice cold.

The other man leaned forward, a predatory glint in his eyes. “So,” Mr Lynch said, “what is Mr. Brilliant doing there?” This time it sounded even less like a compliment.

The hotter his anger burned, the icier Adam’s words became. “I do not think that’s any of your business, Mr. Lynch.”

“Indulge me,” he replied, a drawl like a blade on skin. “Because otherwise my pretty little head will come to conclusions on its own. Like how someone like you might only care about the references and the money you’ll get after this. Sure, it’s a nice past-time for now, but the second something better comes up, you’ll leave Gansey and all his ghost shit in the dust.”

Adam’s head was a torrent of sound —he couldn’t hear his own thoughts; the only thing he could hear was the echo of _someone like you_. His mouth, however, seemed to have a mind of its own.

“_I_ don’t care?” He tried not to raise his voice —it was very hard. “What’s your role in all this, anyways? The only thing I’ve seen you do is drop in to insult all of Gansey’s ideas and make fun of what he does. Oh, and excuse me for giving a damn about having a roof over my head. I know that earning something on your own must be a new concept for you” He closed his mouth with a snap, breathing hard.

The other man stopped trying to pretend at nonchalance and finally sat up facing Adam. He rested his elbows on his knees and crossed his veined hands in front of him. “What do you know about what I do and do not do? You’ve only met me once.” He was leaning forward, in a way that should have felt threatening in the cramped space of the carriage, but instead only served to rile Adam up further.

“And believe me, it was enough, Lynch” he said, giving up all pretences of civility. The corners of Lynch’s mouth pulled up into a sharp thing that didn’t reach his eyes. Adam stared into them and refused to break eye contact first.

“Likewise, _Parrish_.” In terms of getting under someone else’s nerves, Adam had to admit this was a new record, even for him. “And yet, here we are. Now, allow me to repeat myself, why the fuck are you trailing Dick like a dog?”

“It’s my _job”, _he crossed his arms in front of his chest and sat back. “What’s your excuse? Does daddy know you waste your time chasing ghosts instead of the family business?” Where Gansey was all golden old money, Ronan Lynch screamed new money everywhere he went. Adam had had time to observe both kinds at the College, and he could recognise by now the loud arrogance that came with sons of men who had only recently become rich, versus the quiet sureness of those whose families hadn’t had to worry about money for generations.

With Adam’s words, something in the other man changed; where before his aggression had been a sharply honed weapon, now it was a storm that consumed him. Adam was too mad to be scared. _Good_, he thought when the man showed his teeth in a snarl. There was something feral in his eyes, like a wounded wolf ready to attack. Adam didn’t know what exactly he’d said to gain such a reaction but, well, _fuck you too_.

“You shut your fucking mouth. And don’t you act all high and mighty about Gansey. Does he know that his clever new puppy is actually a snake?”

“Are you talking about yourself, Lynch?” It was not his Adam Parrish smile, it wasn’t even his meanest smile; it was his schoolboy smile, his I’ve-never-broken-a-plate-ma’am smile. Somehow, he knew that would irritate Lynch more.

He was right. Lynch sneered and turned to kick at the opposite wall of the carriage with a heavy black boot. He then lay down unceremoniously across the leather seats with his feet propped up against the window, one arm thrown over his eyes and the other one behind his head. The last thing he said to Adam during the rest of the ride was “don’t fucking talk to me”.

“Gladly,” Adam muttered. Lynch made no sign of having heard him, and Adam was left to fume in silence and stare broodingly out of the window.


End file.
